


The Storm and The Fury

by ariel2me



Series: Drabble/Ficlet Collection [9]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-10
Packaged: 2018-04-29 08:44:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 7,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5122058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariel2me/pseuds/ariel2me
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of Stannis Baratheon drabbles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Stannis Baratheon & Shireen Baratheon**

They will tell you that your father lied to steal a throne, to plunder a realm.

I was never that grasping, that greedy. I never wished for a single drop more than what was rightfully mine.

They will tell you that your father was ensorcelled by a sorceress; bewitched, misled, misdirected, led astray by the red woman.

I was never that spineless, that weak-willed. I was never anyone’s puppet. I am my own man. I made my own choices. They may have been the wrong ones, at times, with dreadful consequences, but I  _chose_. I have always chosen. As someday my daughterwill have to choose. When you wear the crown, on your own head be it, the weight of all your decisions, all your mistakes, all your blunders. If we deserve the praise and the admiration for the good, then justice dictates that we deserve the blame and the reproach for the bad as well.

They may even mean well, some of them, when they tell you how I was ridden like a horse by the Lady Melisandre, how I was not culpable, how I did not know any better, how it was all  _her_  fault,  _her_  doing. You will not believe in that lie, because you are my daughter, and you must know that a lie is a lie and must be taken out, even if it is meant to defend, to justify, even to comfort. Even when it comes out of undiminished loyalty.

Even when it comes out of love.

There is no such thing as a harmless lie.

You are the Princess Shireen of House Baratheon, you are my daughter, and you do not belong with the ranks of self-deceivers.  

But I fear that you will believe what you wish to believe, about the distant father who had been like a ship passing through the dark night, about the stranger waiting to be visited by the Stranger.  

And how could I blame you, when I have never taught you to know your own father?

You will have your mother still, the mother who loves you and will protect you at the cost of her own life. She resents a great many things, your mother; we have that in common, she and I. But she does not resent her daughter and she does not hate her only child, despite the lies spread by a few unscrupulous fools. You know the truth of it far better than anyone; you who have known the tenderness she had never shown elsewhere.

You will have your mother still, if not your father; and for that, I could have almost forgiven the gods who were so monstrous as to drown both my mother and my father while their young sons stood watching, praying for mercy and justice that never came.

_Forgiven, but not forgotten._


	2. Chapter 2

**Stannis + ancestors**

The Laughing Storm had caught Robert’s imagination from the moment he saw a likeness of his great-grandsire in one of Maester Cressen’s history books. In the picture, Lyonel Baratheon was sitting proudly astride his horse, his head tilted back, his wind-tossed jet black hair falling over one eye, and he was depicted laughing uproariously at an unseen opponent.

“He must have been jousting at some great and grand tourney. Look how  _big_  his lance is!” Robert said, voice full of wonder and amazement.

“If it was truly a joust, then he would have been wearing his helm and we would not be able to see his hair at all,” Stannis pointed out, for the Laughing Storm was also famous for the gleaming rack of iron antlers atop his helm.

Robert groaned. “It’s a picture! Not boring history lesson.”

Stannis had been drawn more to the Baratheon grandsire he never met, the man who toiled in the perpetual shadow of his famous (some might say  _infamous_ ) and larger-than-life father, the man Stannis’ own father had actually known. And loved. And deeply mourned still, years after Ormund Baratheon’s death in his son’s arms.

At times it seemed as if Steffon was struck anew at his father’s absence with each recall of his name. Stannis had no true notion of this, did not comprehend until it was  _far_  too late how daily present an absence could feel, how _palpable_ the impossible yearning for the dead could be. (Grief was not a void; it was a hungry, angry beast demanding to be fed, always clamoring for its due. He wished his father had taught him that.)

But then there were the fond and loving memories too; stories told, untold and retold by Steffon Baratheon about his lord father, scenes and episodes from a life gone by, a life never witnessed by Lord Ormund’s grandsons.

“If there was ever a likeness of my father in the history books, it should show him surrounded by quills and parchments, noting down the exact grain figures in the storehouses and granaries, and assessing the strength of our garrison down to the last man and the last horse.”

“But was he not a brave, strong warrior in his own right, like his lord father had been?” Robert asked, sounding less than enamored with his grandsire.

“He marched alongside his father when Lord Lyonel declared against the Targaryens, and later he led King Jaehaerys’ army against the pretenders calling themselves the Ninepenny Kings, but my father did not relish fighting and killing for its own sake. He saw it as his duty, a thing that must be done to protect his land and his people, but otherwise, something to be avoided.”

It was hard choosing for Ormund Baratheon, between his father and his king, the king he had been sent to squire for at a young age, back when Lord Lyonel and King Aegon had been fast friends, before the broken betrothal and the shattered trust. Like his father, Ormund had been furious at the shameful treatment of his sister meted out by Prince Duncan. But unlike his father, Ormund Baratheon thought that the matter had been resolved with Prince Duncan renouncing his claim to the throne. Duncan Targaryen was the guilty party, he paid for it with his crown, and that was sufficient punishment in Ormund’s eyes. Lyonel Baratheon thought otherwise.

“He chose blood, in the end. My father chose his lord father over his loyalty to his king, but only after all his efforts to convince his father to reconsider his decision had proved futile. After he became Lord of Storm’s End, however, my father was never anything other than a leal servant to King Aegon and King Jaehaerys. He thought the Baratheons were suspect, in the eyes of many, because of his lord father’s failed rebellion. He thought that he had to be the one to prove House Baratheon’s loyalty to the Iron Throne. He saw that as his duty.”

Ormund Baratheon had died under the Targaryen banner leading King Jaehaerys’ army in the Stepstones, twenty one years after his father had raised his own banner against the Targaryens. Surely even the Targaryens would see that as sufficient proof of House Baratheon’s loyalty, Stannis thought. “You never know. There is no telling with some people,” Steffon Baratheon told his son, when he explained why he did not dare refuse King Aerys’ summon recalling him to court and naming him to the small council.


	3. Chapter 3

**Stannis + history (Siege of Storm’s  End), Stannis + ancestor (Argella Durrandon)**

Maester Cressen found him at the parapet, staring out to Shipbreaker Bay at a storm of ships flying the burgundy banners.

“Would that your gods are useful enough to send another storm to destroy the Redwyne fleet, Maester.”

Cressen looked shocked, but his voice was gentle. “It is not a thing to be prayed for, my lord. Of any god.”

“What is not to be prayed for? To pray for the death of our enemies? Shall we pray only for the death of our loved ones?”

The maester’s hand hovered over Stannis’ shoulder. Once, Cressen would not have hesitated to place his hand there, even to squeeze the flesh in a gesture of comfort, of affection, of commiseration. But this was no longer a boy standing beside him, and he was no longer certain how welcomed the gesture would be to this young man.     

“Have no fear, Maester. I have no intention of praying to the Seven for anything, even for the death of our enemies.”

Standing on this same parapet, they had prayed together for Lord Steffon and his lady wife, and for the other unfortunate souls aboard Windproud. The storm did not let up, though. And the ship still sank.

“Has there been another raven?”

“No, my lord.”

The last news they had of Robert told of his march to the Trident. Prince Rhaegar had returned from whatever bolthole he had been hiding in, to lead an army of more than forty thousand men to meet Robert’s force, it was claimed.  

If Robert should fall in battle …

_Bend the knee, my lord. Bend the knee and open the gates. And we may all live yet._

_Never. I made a promise to my brother. They will have to come and take the castle._

_You may take my castle, but you will win only bones, blood and ashes,_ the last storm queen had declared.

Would his men betray him, like Argella Durrandon’s men had betrayed her?

Ser Gawen had tried. Gawen Wylde and three of his knights, attempting to sneak out the back gate in the dark of night to surrender to Mace Tyrell. Stannis had caught them himself. Storm’s End’s master-at-arms, the man who had put the first wooden sword in Stannis’ hand when he was all of five, the knight who had told Stannis that a man should wear his scars with pride when Stannis’ first real sword grazed his own cheek and drew blood.

To be betrayed by those you  _trusted_ , by those you had foolishly believed were not capable of betrayal …

No, they were not truly  _his_  men, they were Robert’s men, given to his sacred keeping and made his solemn duty, as Storm’s End was, in Robert’s absence.

 “If your brother is dead –“ Cressen began.

“Not  _you_  too, Maester!” Stannis snapped. “I will not open the gates for our enemies to enter Storm’s End unopposed. I will not! That is the end of it.”

“You are your brother’s heir. If he is dead, then –“  

“Then they will make Eddard Stark king. Or Jon Arryn.”

“Neither has a claim to the throne.”

Neither did Robert, strictly speaking. His Targaryen blood came through the female line. “Aerys is mad. He has broken all covenants with his lords after his brutal slaying of Rickard Stark and Brandon Stark.” That had been Jon Arryn’s argument, that Aerys had nullified the leal service owed to him by his lords through his own unjust actions.

Argella Durrandon had declared herself the storm queen as soon as the news of her father’s death reached Storm’s End. Had his defeat come as a surprise to her? Had she been convinced of her father’s victory, of his invincibility? Or had she been prepared for his death all along? The history books were silent on these matters, and Argella herself disappeared from their accounts after her marriage to her father’s slayer. History belonged to the victors, not to the vanquished and the defeated.

“Robert is not dead,” Stannis insisted.  

“Pray gods that he is not, my lord. But we must be prepared for any eventuality.”

“He is not dead. I would know if he is.” When you have lived under someone’s shadow your whole life, surely you would know, if he was gone? Surely you could  _feel_  it, in your bones, if he was no more?   

“Shall we pray together? For your brother’s victory and safe return.”

Stannis scoffed. Cressen should have known better by now. “I would trust Robert’s warhammer before I would trust the Seven.”

He did not pray, but he spoke to Robert in the silence of his own thoughts, as he often did.

_All your luck and all your charms, the sun always shining on you, always, your whole life; you cannot be dead._

_You will not die. You must not._


	4. Chapter 4

**Canon divergence AU in which the conversation between Stannis and Maester Aemon in ASOS touches on their shared relations.**

___________________________

_“I am well aware of that,” [Stannis] said. “I am aware of more than you know, Aemon Targaryen.” (A Storm of Swords)_

_“Stannis... Stannis has some of the dragon blood in him, yes. His brothers did as well. Rhaelle, Egg’s little girl, she was how they came by it... their father’s mother... she used to call me Uncle Maester when she was a little girl.” (A Feast for Crows)_

____________________________ _

King Aegon the Fifth had visited the Wall many years ago. He brought a page with him, his black-haired Baratheon grandson. Rhaelle’s boy. It was hard for Maester Aemon to think of little Rhaelle as a mother, the girl he used to bounce on his knees, the girl who used to call him Uncle Maester and begged to be allowed to play with his maester’s chains.

“My mother sends her love to her favorite uncle.” Those had been the first words out of Steffon Baratheon’s mouth, upon meeting his great-uncle for the first time. Words from a mouth shaped for smiling, for laughing. His eyes laughed too, drinking in all the new sights with wonder and amazement.

This man, this king, Steffon’s son; his voice was harsh, a bark. Maester Aemon did not need the power of sight to know that Stannis Baratheon was not smiling, let alone laughing.

 _Does he have his father’s look?_  Foolish to wonder.  _An old man’s foolish fancy_ , Aemon scolded himself. Even if he was not blind, he would not be able to tell. He had never known what Steffon Baratheon looked like as a man, after all. Only as a boy.

“Your lord father was here, when he was a boy,” he said, to Steffon’s son.

“I know. He was ten. He dreamed of joining the Sworn Brothers of the Night’s Watch and protecting the realm from the wicked enemies beyond the Wall. The dream lasted a whole day, until his grandsire reminded him that as the only son and heir of Lord Baratheon, he had more paramount duties to consider.”

“I was grieved to hear of his passing.” How many years ago was that? Aemon frowned to remember. Twenty? More than that? The years passed and blurred, the world turned and turned, and the death, oh the death. So  _much_ death. And yet here he still was. Why did the gods spare him when they did not spare so many?

“Why should you grieve for my father? You know him scarcely at all.”

“He was beloved by my brother. My brother -”

“I know who your brother was,” Stannis said, in a tone that denoted finality and brooked no argument, in a tone that reminded Aemon of his own father when he would declare a subject closed and done with. Maekar Targaryen did not suffer fools or endless chatter gladly.

Steffon’s son spoke again. “You could have been king, they said. You were the older of King Maekar’s surviving sons.”

“I was a maester of the Citadel, sworn to serve. And my brother would have made a better king, I believed. And I was proven right.”

“Were you? Or is that a tale you tell yourself to sleep at night, after shirking your duty to the realm?”

Aemon despaired.  _Egg, this is your great-grandson. Steffon’s boy. Did he not know all that you tried to achieve? Did Summerhall … Aerys … the rebellion … did they erase all the good you tried so hard to do, for the realm, for the people?_

He raised his frail voice, shaking with the effort. “My brother … your great-grandsire was a good king. Or does it not suit the Baratheons to remember that?”

“He was better than most,” Stannis replied, grudgingly, it seemed. “Not that the bar is raised very high, when it comes to good kings,” he scoffed.

Perhaps this counted as high praise coming from this stern man, this king who reminded Aemon of another king, long ago.

Aemon thought of the cold sword, the sword without a heat Stannis had wielded.

_He is not Azor Ahai come again. I must look elsewhere for that. But you would recognize him, Father, were you to meet him now._


	5. Chapter 5

**Stannis + mythology (Durran/Elenei)**

There was a story his mother told him, long ago, one that existed nowhere in the songs and legends, nowhere in the pages of history; one that came entirely from her, of her own imagining.

“She went to the sea, Elenei, one dark and stormy night, when it seemed like Durran’s seventh castle would suffer the same fate as the last six.”

”To plead with her mother and father to spare her husband, the castle, and the stormlands?”

“To bargain with them. To bargain with the gods.”

“Did she offer to leave Durran? To leave her mortal husband and to be the immortal daughter of the gods once again?”

“No. She was mortal already, you see, after she chose Durran. There was no going back from that.”

“Then what was the bargain?”

“She told them – _‘I will drown myself in these stormy waters unless you cease your acts of vengeance, unless you promise to leave us be from this day forward.’_ ”

“She loved Durran _that_ much?”

“That wasn’t the point. She knew _they_ loved her too much to allow her to die, her mother and father. _That_ was the point.”

He had tried that, bargaining with the gods, the night before the bodies were washed ashore.

 _Take_ me _. You can have_ me _, if only you would return them alive from these stormy waters, my mother and father._

But why would they want him at all? Second son, second best.

He tried what Elenei tried – ran to the sea, waded into the waves.

_I will -_

But why would they care if he live or die? _His_ gods were not Elenei’s gods. _His_ gods were not the loving mother and father who could not bear to watch their daughter perish. _His_ gods were the cruel monsters who had no trouble drowning a pair of loving mother and father while their sons stood watching.

 _His_ gods were no longer any god of his, he vowed, when the bodies were finally washed ashore. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Stannis Baratheon & Robert Baratheon, loss**

“When we saw Tywin Lannister that day, sitting on the throne, I thought it would be so glorious to live as long as that, to grow that old and powerful, to sit there so majestically with everyone bowing and scraping, hanging on to your every word. Little did I know …” Robert’s voice trailed off into silence.

“Tywin Lannister was only six-and-twenty at the time. Hardly an old man.”

Robert groaned. “Don’t be so _bloody_ literal,  Stannis.” He added, “Though, it _is_ strange to think of my good-father as a young man. Remember what Great-Uncle  Harbert once said about him? ‘ _Born and fashioned a man of middle age, that one.’_ ”

“You are mistaken. Great-Uncle Harbert was referring to me, not to Lord Tywin.”

“No, _you_ are mistaken.”

“I am not!”

“We could ask Cressen, I suppose. How old is he now? Eighty? Close to it, I’d wager. Soon he will be gone as well, and there will be no one left who remembers.”

_Except us._

But they recalled such different things, Stannis and his brothers. Shared experience very seldom translated into shared memory for them.

Stannis did not want to think about Maester Cressen dying. He changed the subject. “Did you ever tell Lord Tywin about us mistaking him for the king?”

Robert laughed. “Do you take me for a _fool_? Of course I never did. No need to inflate his hubris and his sense of his own importance even more.” Robert paused, staring into the distance. “I should have said no, when Jon proposed the match with  Cersei.”

Stannis had even less of a wish to discuss his brother’s marriage. “You should have sent Jaime Lannister to the Wall,” he said instead.

Robert shook his head. “He did me a favor, killing Aerys.”

“Aerys should have paid for his crimes, but he should have been punished according to the law. That was ill done, how he died. It was murder, not justice.”

“You and Ned are in agreement about that. Except Ned spoke of honor instead of justice.” With a sly glance at Stannis, Robert said, “See, I don’t always listen to Ned either.”

“Or to Jon Arryn. Or to Father when he was alive.”

After a pause, Robert asked, “Why don’t we ever talk about them?”

No need to ask who Robert meant. Their father and mother.

“You only ever want to talk about Lyanna Stark.” It was as if her death had overshadowed everything, had become the defining tragedy of his life, as Robert saw it. As if the death of their father and mother had been relegated into some distant and musty corner for Robert, Stannis thought, not without resentment.

“Her loss was something I thought I could avenge. But smashing Rhaegar’s skull did not feel so good in the end. It did not bring her back, and that was the only thing I wanted.”

You could not smash a storm, or the sea, or the gods, with your warhammer. Though, Stannis had felt like smashing all seven idols in the sept with his bare hands while he and Robert were keeping vigil for their parents’ bodies.

“You should have done it. It would have made you feel better. At least in that moment.”

“Done what?”

“Smashed the gods in the sept. You wanted to, I know you did. I saw the way your fists were clenched. That was how I felt just before I smashed Rhaegar’s skull.”

“What good would that have done?”

“What good does silently brooding and seething with fury do? Except to make you lose your hair prematurely, and annoy people with the exasperating sound of your teeth grinding at all hours.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Stannis Baratheon & Steffon Baratheon**

“We will return in time for Robert’s nameday,” Steffon says.

Stannis nods. Robert will be sixteen. A grand feast is to be expected, for the coming-of-age of the heir to Storm’s End. Robert will love it to no end. Stannis will wish for it to end as soon as it begins.

“Perhaps your mother and I will find a bride for you in Volantis, and the feast will be a celebration of your betrothal as well as Robert’s nameday,” his father says, clapping Stannis’ arm.

The mention of a bride unsettles Stannis, having overheard his mother and father discussing the possible consequences should they fail in the task of finding a suitable bride for Prince Rhaegar. The court is buzzing with rumors of King Aerys’ plan to appoint his cousin as Hand of the King after Steffon Baratheon’s return from Volantis, but the talk in Storm’s End is more ominous and far less celebratory. 

“It was a jape, Stannis,” his father says, noting the troubled look on Stannis’ face.

“I know, Father.” Stannis’ bride will be a daughter of one of the stormlords, his father had said before. The stormlords are expecting it, after Robert’s betrothal with a daughter of the north.

 _(Perhaps we need to find a bride who can teach Stannis how to laugh_ , Steffon had said to his wife, only partly in jest.

 _He knows how to laugh_ , Cassana had replied. _He may not find mirth in the same things that others do, but that does not mean that Stannis does not know how to laugh.)_

“Look after your little brother.”

Stannis nods.

“And Robert.”

Stannis frowns. “Robert knows how to look after himself.”

(Robert is eager, so very eager and bursting with anticipation for Windproud to depart.

 _Are you so keen to see them gone, Mother and Father?_ grumbled Stannis.

 _I’m only eager to show Father what I can do. To test my mettle and to prove myself a worthy heir,_ Robert replied pompously.

 _He is afraid, lad_ , Great-Uncle Harbert said. _Deep down,_ _your brother is afraid, like your father was afraid. Like your grandsire my own brother was afraid. You cannot be a good lord if you do not fear the consequences of your failure, my brother often said._         

_But my father never boasted and puffed his chest like a peacock, surely? I cannot believe that Father ever carried on like Robert does._

_Each man deals with fear in his own way, rightly or wrongly,_ said Harbert Baratheon, who has served three Lords Baratheon in his time – his father, older brother and now nephew – and thought it his duty to teach Stannis how to serve _his_ older brother.)

“Robert will need his brothers by his side when he is Lord of Storm’s End,” Steffon says.

_That will not be for years and years, Father. You are strong and healthy, and you will be Lord of Storm’s End for many more years to come. You and Mother will watch your sons marry and your grandchildren being born, and perhaps great-grandchildren too._

Those words remain unspoken, though. He is four-and-ten, too old to believe in tales fit for singers, as Great-Uncle Harbert would say.

(Ormund Baratheon was strong and healthy, and he left his son fatherless when Steffon was only four-and-ten.)

“Pray for our safe return,” Steffon says, before embracing his son.


	8. Chapter 8

**For the prompt: Stannis & Shireen Baratheon, hope**

The letter from his daughter arrived at a most unfortunate time, when he was spending all waking moments trying to extricate Robert and the realm from yet another disaster of Robert’s own making. It took him three days after its arrival to finally read Shireen’s letter, recalling all the while Maester Cressen’s gentle rebuke that he should be writing more often to the wife and the daughter he left behind in Dragonstone.

 _I have found a splendid pet, Father_ , Shireen wrote, before adding, _Actually, Patches was the one who found her for me, in Aegon’s Garden._

 _We have found a most splendid fool_ , his father had written about finding Patchface, another lifetime ago. The fool had survived while the parents of three young sons, one of them still a toddler tottering unsteadily on his feet, had not. The High Septon was fond of prattling on and on about how _just_ the judgment of the gods was bound to be, but where was the justice in that?  

Though, if Patchface were to perish now, Shireen would be inconsolable. Not that Stannis would have the least idea on how to even begin to try to console his grieving daughter. Her mother would know. Isn’t that what mothers are for?

Unbidden, the retreating figures of his own mother and father came to mind, his mother and father as he last saw them alive. Turn around! Let me see your faces for the last time, he always pleaded in his dream. They never did turn around, no matter how much he willed it. The sight of the backs of their heads seemed almost like a silent rebuke to Stannis, a judgment from the dead.

_What kind of father have you turned out to be, Stannis?_

_Robert is worse!_

_Is that any consolation for us? Have we failed our sons so badly?_

_It is not your fault. Neither of you. We failed ourselves._

His eyes roamed through his daughter’s letter, not really seeing or understanding the words, until he reached a certain part. _I hope she will be able to fly again, when her wings are healed. It must be sad and so lonely for a bird not to be able to soar in the sky like all her companions._

Stannis halted. He went back to the beginning of the letter, reading more carefully this time. The ‘splendid pet’ turned out to be a pigeon, a fallen bird with injured wings. Cook had wanted to put the pigeon out of its misery and serve it for dinner, but Shireen had run to her mother, promising to nurse the injured bird back to health herself, and Selyse had promptly put an end to the roasted pigeon notion.  

_She is not in too much pain, I hope. Maester Cressen said the ointment -_

_I hope. I hope. I hope_ , his daughter kept writing.

_I hope you will find a suitable bride for Prince Rhaegar. I hope you will return home safely. I hope I will see you both very soon._

_You foolish, foolish child_ , he thought, but whether he was actually thinking of his daughter, or of his younger self, or perhaps both, he would not have been able to enlighten even himself.  

_What should I name her, Father? Mother said you had a goshawk called Proudwing when you were a boy._

An ill-omen name if ever there was one, Stannis scoffed. Her pigeon would never fly again. Or it would, and then it would swiftly leave her behind. Either way, it was bound to end in tears, thwarted hope and grave disappointment. The trick, he had finally learned, far too late, was to expect the worst, always, and then you would never be disappointed, would never have to suffer the recurring pain of disillusionment.

He knew what Cressen would say. The old maester would say that it was too cruel a lesson to be taught to a child, any child. But was it any crueler than leaving them vulnerable and defenseless against the cruelties of the gods?

But then again, how much had always expecting the worst truly protected him from disappointment and disillusionment? Or was that just another layer of illusion he had never managed to shed despite his best effort - the illusion that he was a man completely _without_ illusion?

 _She may never fly again, your pigeon. You must be prepared for that possibility_ , he wrote his daughter.

 _But I hope she will, one day_ , he finally added, the words coming hard, like an old friend that had become a complete stranger.


	9. Chapter 9

“Don’t,” Stannis says, his hand clasping Robert’s arm before Robert could raise his bow. “Not this one. Leave him alone. Just leave him be.”

The stag makes no move to run. Surely he must hear them coming, and yet he does not move a muscle.

“Why not? He is right there for the taking,” Robert protests. “If the creature is too stupid to run and save himself, why should we not put him out of his misery?”

 _Because it would be a cruelty to hunt those who cannot save themselves_ , Father used to say.

 _The stag is mourning his true mate_ , Mother said, of another stag who also did not run.

Robert should have remembered, Stannis thinks, bitterly. He manages to remember each and every little thing Lord Arryn tells him after all. And it is not the hunting knife Father had given him Robert is carrying, but the one gifted to him by Lord Arryn. “The blade is sharper,” Robert says, as his excuse. Of course the blade is sharper; it is the knife he uses every time he goes hunting, while the one Father had given to him is rusting in the box carved with prancing stags.

‘I’d rather be hunting boars than stags,” Robert grumbles. “Last year, Ned and I –“

Stannis stops listening. Last year, they had been five, not three. He watches the stag, as still as an effigy, waiting, still waiting, for the one who would never return.

Robert sighs. “I miss them too. You are not the only one, Stannis.”


	10. Chapter 10

Windproud sank in sight of the shore where Steffon and Cassana used to stand, holding hands, watching the sun go down, painting the sky a brilliant shade. Where they had their first kiss, the year his father died in his arms and she held him in her arms while he wept for the father who would never see him become a father. Where he held their firstborn and promised her that they would both live to see their son become a father, even a grandfather.

 _At least they were together to the very end_ , people kept repeating, as if it was a consolation, or even a strike of good fortune. But Stannis knew better. They would not have wished to die together, his father and mother, not now, not yet. They would not have wished to leave their young children both fatherless and motherless in the same instant. They would have prayed, fervently, for the other to survive, as fervently as Stannis had prayed for both of them to survive.


	11. Chapter 11

_Mother, flee._

_Father, run._

He had not had that dream in years, the dream where the raging sea, aided and abetted by the howling storm, rose and rose higher until it resembled a dragon, a merciless dragon devouring his parents whole. This time, there was a third figure with his mother and father, a boy he would have recognized with his eyes fully closed.

The boy managed to escape the clutches of the monstrous sea-dragon, only to be menaced by another threat, a looming shadow chasing him, ready to pounce.

The shadow took on the countenance of a man.

_I was asleep. My hands were clean._

The boy screamed.

_I was asleep. My hands were clean._

The shadow pounced.

_I was asleep. My hands were clean._

He refused to see. Refused to recognize the face staring back at him. _No, this is not me. And that is not him, he is not that boy, no longer that boy, he is a man grown, he is a traitor, he is -_

_Still your brother, Stannis._

_Mother, I was asleep! And when I woke, my hands were clean._

_Open your eyes, Stannis._

He opened them, as his father insisted. And screamed. 


	12. Chapter 12

If only, they kept saying. If only he had a son to continue the fight, the fight for the throne that was his by right. The son he never had; they mourned for that young man who never was. The son he always dreamed of, the son he desperately yearned for, they claimed, as if in life he had been the kind of man eager to reveal to all and sundry his deepest dreams and desires.

Never mind the daughter he already had, the flesh and blood already existing.

Never mind that it was the _daughter_ of another man, not the son, who defeated him in the fight for that throne.

If only, they kept saying. if only he had a better wife able to give him sons. They mourned for that 'good wife' that never was, like they mourned for the 'glorious son' who should have replaced the 'disappointing daughter.'

As if it did not take two, husband _and_ wife, to make a son, or a daughter.

As if the wife was always solely to blame.

As if the daughter they had made together was pointless, completely beside the point.

 _You are loved. You are valued. You are worthy_ , they told their daughter.

_But am I enough?_

_I will win your throne back for you, Father._

_You will win your throne for yourself,_ her mother tells her. 

 


	13. Chapter 13

“Do you consider Dragonstone your home?”

Stannis frowns. Who _is_ this woman, this stranger Selyse swears by? Who is she to ask him that question? How _dare_ she?

“How presumptuous of you,” Stannis retorts, glaring at her with eyes fit to curdle the blood of most mortals.

She does not flinch. She does not look away. She smiles; not a meek or contrite smile but a challenging one, as if to say, _I dare, Stannis. I dare to presume. And what will you do about it?_

“What is it to you, my lady, whether I consider Dragonstone my home or not?” he asks, suspiciously. 

“It is not to _me_ that it matters.”

“Storm’s End is my home,” Stannis snaps, before he could think better of it. “ _Was_ my home,” he amends, his bitterness at the lost of that home present still in his voice, despite his best effort to curb it.

“Was,” she repeats, softly.

“ _Was_ , as opposed to _is_. I presume you know the difference, my lady?”

“Oh I do, my lord. I assure you that I do.” She does not even look offended. She looks as if ... as if she is humoring a sulky and bad-tempered child.

_Damn the woman!_

“My lady Selyse tells me you spend most of the year at court. Is King’s Landing now your home?” 

“King’s Landing is where I serve my brother and do my duty to the realm. That is the beginning and the end of it.” That viper’s pit was certainly _not_ his home. 

“Then,” she asks, “where is your home?”

It makes him furious, that he has no ready answer to give her. It makes him even more furious, that he could not get her question (and the sound of her voice, and the look on her face) out of his mind, even after his return to King’s Landing, his return to yet another place that is _not_ his home, never his home. 


	14. Chapter 14

He chose the firmest of the apples, not the reddest. His mother said the reddest apples were not always the best, just like the brightest and shiniest of things were not always the best.

“Who,” Mother pronounced, in her make-believe giant voice, “has been stealing my apples? My _precious, precious_ apples.”

Shrieking, Stannis ran around the apple tree, while his mother tried to catch him. She almost got him a few times, but he was quicker and managed to elude her. “You can't catch me, Lady Giant,” he said, as he paused to catch his breath. “You'll _never_ catch me,” he declared, as he continued running.

Hitching up her gown so she could run faster, Mother said, “Just you wait, Ser Apple-Stealer. I'm coming for you. I'm coming to get you.”

This time she got him. She _really_ got him. They were rolling around on the grass, laughing and shrieking, when Stannis saw his father coming towards them. “Father's back!”

His mother had a smile on her face, until she saw that Father was not alone. Swiftly, she pulled Stannis and herself off the ground, rearranging her gown with one hand and Stannis' hair with the other. She smiled again, as the two men approached them, but it was a very different kind of smile from before. A _lady's_ smile, Mother called it. Mother had put on her proper lady's face, to greet their guest.

“Jon has come to visit us, Cassana,” Father said. He also had a smile on his face, a _real_ smile, as if he was really glad that _this_ particular guest had come to Storm's End. Then, more tentatively, his smile fading slightly, Father said, “He is here about the matter we discussed earlier.”

“Of course. You are very welcomed at Storm's End, Lord Arryn.” It was not her make-believe giant voice Mother was using, but it _sounded_ like a make-believe voice to Stannis all the same. His hands still clutching the apple he had taken from the basket, Stannis peered at this guest, this tall man who was taller than his father. Older too, from the lines on his face and the grey in his hair. Mother did not like him, or did not like how much _Father_ liked him, Stannis guessed. Her hands were wrapped around Stannis' shoulders, tightly, as if she was afraid the tall man was a boy-stealer who was going to steal him away from her.

The tall man bent down to get a closer look at Stannis. He smiled kindly and asked, “Is this the lad? Is this young master Robert?”

“No! This is Stannis. This is our younger son,” Mother replied.


	15. Chapter 15

In his dreams, he destroyed them a hundred times, nay, a _thousand_ times, each and every face of the Seven. Hacked at them with his sword, crushed them with his bare hands, even appropriated Robert's warhammer to bash them to oblivion.

 _This,_ he drove home the first strike, _is for the mother and father you forced to die within sight of home, within sight and embrace of their waiting sons._

This, was for the lovers who drowned, the husband and wife torn asunder by the sea and the storm.

This, was for the man and woman who had been _more_ than just his father and mother, who had died before he was old enough, and wise enough, to see them and to know them as more than just his father and mother, as the sum of _all_ their parts.

This, was for the _silence_ , the thundering, deafening silence – the laughters that no longer rang, the warnings and admonitions that no longer instructed, the cajolings and encouragements that no longer comforted.

This, was for the _absence_ , the sheer physical absence, that monster whose daily presence could not be ignored and could not be forgotten. Or forgiven.

“They would wish you to forgive the gods,” Maester Cressen implored.

“They would not wish for you to lose faith in the Seven,” the septon at Storm's End insisted.

But how _easy_ it was, to attribute wishes and desires to the dead, to attribute our _own_ wishes and desires to the dead. How easy, and how _futile_.


	16. Chapter 16

They came across the herd on their daily walk together. The stags were dancing, his mother had told him, her own eyes dancing with glee.

He had not believed her. Even as a boy of six, he had not been very credulous, already a budding skeptic in the making.  _Stags don't dance,_  he announced, solemnly.

_Why not? You've heard of dancing bears, have you not?_

He nodded.

_So why can't there be dancing stags?_

_Stags don't dance_ , he repeated, stubbornly.  _They just don't._

 _They can if they wish it,_  his mother said.  _Why, the stag in the Baratheon sigil is a dancing stag!_

He laughed.  _That's not a dancing stag. That's a prancing stag._

_What's the difference?_

_You know the difference, Mother._

_I don't. Show it to me. Show me the difference between dancing and prancing._

Despite later claims to the contrary, he  _did_  know how to laugh. He even knew how to dance. Or at least, he used to, once upon a time.


End file.
